Polling Polls: Americans Independent and Irate

A poll of opinion polls shows that Americans are undergoing rapidly changing attitudes.

RealClearPolitics, a national polling aggregator, shows that Americans are becoming less and less thrilled about the direction of the country and with the job Congress is doing. Support has been peeling off steadily, says RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan.

The danger for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party is the independent voters' shift away from Democrat policies.

“Independents have flipped negative,” warns Bevan, who mans the polls for a living. “That’s not a good thing for any party.”

You need to look no further than the data coming out of the first gubernatorial races since the Democrats took control of Washington to identify voter angst and ire.

Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia appear to be heading in different directions but are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.

In Virginia, a state that swung first in 2006 to Democrat Jim Webb in his Senate race then further to Obama in 2008, Republican Bob McDonnell is leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by wider margins with each new poll.

In New Jersey -- a state that has been Democratic for years (the last time the state went for the GOP presidential candidate was in 1988) – the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon Corzine, continues to average about 40 percent of the vote, while his Republican challenger Chris Christie has fallen more than six points in the past two weeks. The beneficiary of Christie's descent has been Chris Daggett, an independent who is winning support in the double digits.

“What do these phenomena have in common?” says Villanova political science professor Lara Brown. “In two words: disillusionment and disgust.”

Americans, particularly registered and likely voters are disillusioned and disgusted with both political parties and their candidates, who seem to be over-promising, under-delivering, asking for too much, and taking advantage of their positions, explains Brown.

Americans are simply worn out by inflated rhetoric and the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" existence of the Washington insiders who just a few months ago said they were outsiders.